


i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

by hope_calaris



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Post Movie, mentions of the crusades, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25941169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hope_calaris/pseuds/hope_calaris
Summary: Some deaths just ... linger. They stay in their bones, reverberate under their skin, echo in their skulls. A miniscule rebellion of their bodies in the face of the unnaturalness of their immortality. It takes time, Joe knows from experience, for this to pass; for the memory of pain to fade from the lines of their faces.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 13
Kudos: 205





	i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

**Author's Note:**

> i carry your heart with me(i carry it in  
> my heart)i am never without it(anywhere  
> i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done  
> by only me is your doing,my darling)  
> i fear  
> no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want  
> no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)  
> and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant  
> and whatever a sun will always sing is you
> 
> here is the deepest secret nobody knows  
> (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  
> and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows  
> higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
> and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
> 
> i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
> 
> \-- e.e. cummings

Some deaths just ... _linger_. They stay in their bones, reverberate under their skin, echo in their skulls. A miniscule rebellion of their bodies in the face of the unnaturalness of their immortality. It takes time, Joe knows from experience, for this to pass; for the memory of pain to fade from the lines of their faces. 

Sometimes it only takes a mere days, sometimes a few months. And sometimes, if they’re really unlucky, a death just stays with them, to resurface in haunted dreams or to cloud a sunny morning with pain long gone.

Joe had lost his head and a few vital organs before that in the utter carnage that was now known as the Sack of Constantinople. It was one of his more gruesome deaths and to this day he still remembers it in stark accuracy. He recalls the hatred in his attackers’ eyes, not unlike the hatred he’d seen in Nicky’s eyes the first fifty or so times the other man had killed him. But Nicky’s hatred had given way to confusion when Joe’s body had refused to stay dead, and eventually to friendship and something the word ‘love’ could never cover adequately, no matter the language. Joe had held no hope for the Crusaders who had flooded the city with their rage, all pretense of Christian values or mercy long forgotten, their humanity drowning in blood and screams of the innocents. 

It hurts to be beheaded, and it hurts even more to heal from that. 

It’s one of his deaths that linger, as if the memory is engraved in his spine, making him feel an ache when he turns his head wrong or sleeps too many nights on the floor. Nicky always notices, because of course he does after nearly spending a millenia sharing mind, body and soul, and when he does his fingers rest a moment longer on Joe’s neck, his kisses are more heated, like he wants to replace one sensation with another. 

Joe knows that feeling all too well. He’d give a lot for Nicky to just forget the string of his latest deaths -- if only the universe were so inclined to take his offering. As it stands, the ghosts of Merrick, Kozak and Keane will accompany them all for a while. And he doesn’t even remember how many times he died in that lab in the name of science and progress, stripped of his humanity, his personhood.

What he does remember in vivid detail, though, are Nicky’s barely stifled screams and, later, the halo of blood and bone around his head. All rational thought had fled Joe in that moment, his heart torn out of his chest, his very soul having been ripped in two. He’d been utterly convinced to have been left behind.

“You think too loud.” Nicky’s soft voice drags him out of his thoughts and he looks down to where Nicky’s head -- his perfectly fine head with no leaking brain matter -- rests in his lap. He’s been sleeping, or whatever passes as sleeping for him in these slow moving days. The dark circles under his eyes tell a story of restless nights, when even Joe’s embrace can’t quiet the thoughts.

After Paris, after _Booker_ , they’d gone to Ireland. It had been Nicky’s idea, one of the few sentences he’d uttered, and Joe thinks Andy and Nile were just so relieved to hear him speak at all they had agreed immediately. They rarely come to this safe house, it’s rather too remote for a quick getaway if needed, but this time around it feels right. Their house overlooks a bay with an island a few kilometers further out. Once upon a time, even before Joe had met Nicky, monks had decided it to be a brilliant idea to found a monastery on what only just amounts to a rock in the unforgiving sea. They can see it through the big window from their place on the couch, and Nicky has spent hours watching it through half-lidded eyes. Joe wonders what he’s thinking about these days. 

He runs his fingers through Nicky’s -- perfectly clean -- hair but stops immediately when a flicker of pain crosses Nicky’s face.

“What is it, habibi?” He asks, suddenly worried, Andy’s gunshot wound refusing to heal clear in his mind.

Nicky hesitates, and it’s so unlike _them,_ Joe’s heart stutters for a second. The last few days changed them, he knows that. They took Booker, tore his family apart, made Andy mortal and hurt them in a way he didn’t think possible anymore. But they also gave them Nile, and he hopes one day it all will balances out again.

“I ... “ Nicky trails off, searching for the words that come so easily to Joe, but not to him. He takes Joe’s hand -- the one in Nicky’s hair, the one that had hurt him somehow -- and laces their fingers together, presses a quick kiss to Joe’s knuckles. “Sometimes I can still feel it, the gun in my mouth. And then it hurts,” he finally admits, “but not because of you -- never because of you, my love.” Joe suddenly wishes he could do Keane’s death all over again. “It will pass, Joe, you know it will,” Nicky tries to reassure him even now, and Joe shouldn’t be surprised to realize he can love this man even more. Maybe one day humankind will come up with a language that can fully describe all he feels for the other man.

In the meantime he settles for “Ti amo,” and “I just wished you wouldn’t hurt,” whispered against Nicky’s unmarred skin.

“I know,” Nicky replies softly and raises his head to kiss him.

**Author's Note:**

> If Greg Rucka can make people immortal without giving us an explanation, I can make these immortals suffer without giving an explanation. I don't make the rules.
> 
> Also, English is not my first language and I haven't published anything in ... um ... oh, 2 1/2 years. So, please be gentle.
> 
> And in case you didn't recognize, their safehouse is overlooking Skellig Michael. That bay is one of my most favorite places on this earth.


End file.
